


Champagne on Skin

by Arej



Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [27]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Established Relationship, Food Play, M/M, Non-standard use of champagne, Other, aziraphale has full control and crowley loves it, i do hope i've used the rating right, nothing explicit actually but very suggestive, they're not really male but it's m/m since i used male pronouns throughout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-24 18:00:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22022113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arej/pseuds/Arej
Summary: Day 27 of the advent calendar of prompts.Crowley is having trouble finding a word; Aziraphale isn't overly concerned with helping.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561027
Comments: 12
Kudos: 105





	Champagne on Skin

Humans have words for everything.

It’s impressive, really; Crowley is oddly proud. Adam and Eve had been naming things in the Garden, sure, but that was at God’s behest, and their instructions had only stretched so far. But they’d taken that task and kept at it, after, built it larger, wider, attempted to catalogue the whole world with their words, as if that might give them some measure of control over it. At least, that’s been his theory, watching humans put names not only to _things_ but to _ideas_. To _feelings_.

It was from watching humans he learned that the pressing, heavy thing in his chest, the feeling that once lulled him into a century-long sleep, only to have the gall to _still be there_ when he awoke, was _melancholy_. It was from watching humans he learned to identify the gaping, yawning chasm, the hollow that opened in his chest whenever he saw Aziraphale, as _yearning_. It was from humans that he learned, surprisingly quickly, the name for that other feeling - the one hiding in the chasm, the one tucked up close under his lungs as if attempting to sneak by unnoticed - was _love_.

Angels have an easier time of it; even if they’ve taken to using human words to label the emotions they sense and, occasionally, feel, they have always been able to _identify_ them, know their purpose. It is an inborn trait, a holy skill, a tool meant to ensure that they’re inspiring the right levels of awe and devotion when interacting with a human and not, say, fear.

It doesn’t always _work_ , but that’s Heavenly tools for you.

That identification - that skill, that’s what was ripped from him, from all of them, in the Fall. Not their ability to feel, but their ability to _know_ ; that previously innate knack for identifying an emotion and its purpose, nameless or otherwise, with no effort required. It has taken Crowley centuries, millennia, to be able to accurately identify his own emotions, and even then he doesn’t always have the right words, can’t describe what it is he feels. It really is no wonder that the remaining angels repackaged the loss of identification as a loss of the ability; to them, sensing an emotion is about the same as feeling it, disconnected bastards that they are.

Well, most of them. Aziraphale, damn his soft heart, never quite managed the disaffected angel approach. Aziraphale _feels_ , and with his whole heart, too. It’s part of why Crowley loves him so much, and so easily. Why Crowley let himself trust, threw himself forward in faith one last time, on Aziraphale’s tender mercy. Why he risked a confession when it seemed the risks were finally past them, why he opened his mouth and spilled out all the words he’d learned for the things he was feeling - yearning, and desire, and love, so much love, enough to help save the world, or at least help fail at ending it.

Why Crowley is here in the bookshop on a dark December night, surrounded by volume upon volume filled with clever human language, grasping for a word. There has to be a word for this; if English hasn’t stolen one, or cobbled it together from scraps of dead languages, surely German contains the right multisyllabic monstrosity to describe this.

All of this is floating, bouncing about somewhere in Crowley’s skull, a collection of drifting thoughts and feelings given the vaguest sense of form. It feels very simple, in his head, this meandering musing on words and their history, on feelings, on identification. It’s very simple, but very pointed.

Yet when he opens his mouth to share these thoughts with Aziraphale, what comes out is a slurred, hissing “’Ssss wordss f’r thissss?”

“Mmm?” Aziraphale hums in response, busy sucking champagne from the hollow of Crowley’s throat, which is the entire reason Crowley’s brain and his mouth aren’t connecting properly.

It started like this: an evening in after a lovely dinner out, the two of them close on the sofa, celebrating the impending end of a year that had nearly died mid-calendar. Crowley, used to having the whole sofa with which to contain the wild gestures of his arms, had drawn his hand back halfway through a grand swing so as not to catch Aziraphale in the face; the champagne in his glass, still committed to the motion, sloshed over onto his grasping fingers. There had been a curse, a switching of the flute to the clean hand, a surge of action to get off the sofa and find a towel, or the sink -

\- and a startled flop back into the cushions as Aziraphale seized Crowley’s champagne-soaked hand and bathed his tongue across the back of it, lips pursed to suck the liquid off the juts of his knuckles.

“Angel, what -” Crowley had managed, before catching sight of the wicked gleam in Aziraphale’s eyes. When the angel, with deliberate eye contact, had spread Crowley’s fingers apart to slide his tongue between the digits, catching the last of the wayward champagne splash, Crowley had dropped his head to the back of the sofa with a helpless moan of surrender.

He’s not entirely certain how, or how quickly, they ended up like this - he hasn’t moved since that first touch of Aziraphale’s hot mouth on his skin but for a shiver when the angel waved his shirt and waistcoat gone, and the slide of his hips to slouch further against the sofa under Aziraphale’s guiding hands. He has no idea how they got here, but he’s absolutely not complaining, not when Aziraphale has caged Crowley’s hips between his knees and the weight of him rests on Crowley’s thighs, pinning the demon in place so thoroughly Crowley couldn’t move even if he wanted to.

He doesn’t want to.

The sofa beneath him should be damp with champagne by now - would be, if Aziraphale weren’t so diligent in catching every drop in that sinfully hot mouth of his, setting Crowley’s skin alight with every touch. He can feel the paths each champagne stream has taken across his shoulders, down his chest, over the curves of his ribcage, by the flaming trail of kisses Aziraphale has left in their wake. His chest would be heaving with effort if he hadn’t shut off the breathing thing some time earlier, specifically so as not to disturb the puddles of champagne Aziraphale had tipped into the hollows of his collarbones; he’d forgotten to turn it back on sometime in the middle of feeling the angel lick those hollows clean.

Any other time he might worry - so much of their communication is unspoken, and here he has denied Aziraphale the helpless stutter of his lungs. Here Aziraphale has pinned his thrashing legs, until the best Crowley can manage is the bare flex of a toe curl. Here the angel’s hands - hot, hot as Hellfire, though not so hot as his angel’s mouth - pin Crowley’s wrists to the sofa, hold his arms still while they ache to reach, to hold, to touch.

Any other time he might worry, but he’s been thinking about words.

“’S wordsss, yeah,” he gasps at the ceiling. “F’r thisss - _fuck_.”

Aziraphale has latched on to a point just shy of the curve of his neck and is intently sucking a bruise there. Crowley thrashes - well, attempts to thrash, coiled muscles straining under angelic strength, until he gives in with a shout. “Angel - _fuck!_ ”

“I think I prefer champagne like this,” Aziraphale muses, finally relinquishing Crowley’s neck. The spot positively throbs with heat. “I’d never cared for it warm before, but this…”

He follows another cool stream of champagne, flowing from nowhere, and leaves the thought unfinished. It doesn’t really need finishing, anyway, not with the way his tongue presses to Crowley’s abdomen, making the skin there twitch and jump and making Crowley swear a blue streak at the ceiling. He can feel Aziraphale chuckle against his stomach.

“Yes, I do think this is my favorite.”

“There’s a - ’s a word,” Crowley insists, eyes screwed tight in an attempt to focus. Aziraphale is following the champagne down, and Crowley’s last remaining brain cells are following it, too. It is a herculean effort just to speak. “You - you know it, angel. Must do, the word for thisss…predilection.”

He could call it a kink - it’s certainly become one of his, had the moment Aziraphale first touched his mouth to Crowley’s champagne-slick hand. He hadn’t even known it _could_ be, not until that moment, and then he was so far gone it wasn’t worth dithering about. It’s definitely a kink, and it’s his, and if it means Aziraphale will keep doing this - keep taking him apart with a hot mouth and firm hands and even firmer control - well, fuck drinking champagne, he’ll _bathe_ in it. It’s a kink for him, all the way.

But for his angel…predilection just sounds better. More refined.

Aziraphale huffs a laugh at him from somewhere left of his bellybutton, as if he can sense the turn of Crowley’s thoughts. Probably he can; it’s not like Crowley has any ability to hide what he’s feeling, taken apart and trembling under Aziraphale like this. “There are words for most kinks, my dear serpent.”

“Ngk.” Somehow Crowley manages not to swallow his tongue. He forgets, sometimes, how much of a bastard Aziraphale can be - if he senses Crowley hedging around a word, even a little, it will invariably spill from the angel’s mouth. He seems to take particular pleasure in Crowley’s reactions.

He only hedges around words that feel too…too vulgar, for an angel, anyway. He should know better; it’s his own fault.

“But you - but you know it,” he persists, pushing the other thoughts away. “The word.”

There is a long stretch of silence in answer. If Crowley couldn’t still feel Aziraphale in his lap - couldn’t feel the soft but unyielding restraint of thick angelic fingers closed around his wrists, feel the soft press of lips to champagne-sticky skin - he’d think the angel gone. As it is, he might be absent mentally, trying to recall the word Crowley is so focused on knowing; the moment stretches, interminable.

Except when Crowley finally rouses enough energy to lift his head and look down, Aziraphale is very, _very_ present, blue eyes twinkling with mischief in a way that squeezes Crowley’s heart inside his ribs. _Fuck_ , he loves him so much - loves that mischievous sparkle, and, oh, when had his trousers gone, how had he not noticed…?

Aziraphale, still fully clothed and keeping deliberate eye contact again, wriggles back a bit on Crowley’s lap, settles his weight closer to the demon’s knees. Crowley whimpers at the motion, caught in that sparkling blue stare.

“Do you really want to know, Crowley?” One white eyebrow wings upward in punctuation. “I can’t say as I recall the specific word right now, seeing as I have something rather more…pressing…on the tip of my tongue.”

Said tongue flicks out, tasting skin, and Crowley’s face contorts - he’s too far gone to know what his face is doing, what anything is doing, know anything at all, really, but it must be good, because Aziraphale grins up at him. “Or can it wait?”

Aziraphale doesn’t wait for an answer, diving in to suck at the jut of Crowley’s hipbone. Crowley answers anyway, chest heaving with a long-forgotten breath.

“Yeah, angel. Yeah, it can wait.”


End file.
